Chapter Eighteen Decision
Chapter Eighteen
Decision
There was a knock on the door. Kensa opened it, blearily.
She did not understand how time had passed or what she had done with it, though an overcast morning had arrived to Bohortha.
Her dreams on wheat fields and the coarsest beard-scratch sang through her head till she was sick with it.
Several faces peered at her from the cottage threshold.
There was a small queue, comprising villagers belonging to Portscatho and their surrounds, who had come to call.
Kensa cleared her throat. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Wednesday,’ was the befuddled reply from Muggersly. He was a fisherman who frequently came to fetch ointment from the healer, in order to ease his shaking hands.
‘Huh,’ said Kensa.
Her palm hurt. She must have spoken, for Muggersly whickered like a horse.
‘Died, you say?’ He slid his cap from his head and nodded. ‘A real shame, that is. I shall give my respects now. You’d be wanting us to leave, then?’
Kensa nodded or did an approximation of a nod, sliding her chin up and down.
Beyond the front step, the day was intermittently cloudy and unseasonably warm.
Its heat stuck Kensa’s tongue to itself.
As word spread, the paths around Bohortha began to clear.
Finally, dazed, the apprentice – was she still an apprentice?
– closed the door. Her feet took her to a chair in the parlour.
It was warm from the last time she had sat on it and she supposed she must have sat on it all night, in fitful sleep.
This had once been Isolde’s seat. The other one had been hers.
Then there was the third chair, the Bucka’s chair, heaped with rubbish as it always was. Well, almost always.
Kensa sat for a long time. Despite her weariness, she could not sleep.
Occasionally, she checked on Isolde. Yes, very dead.
Kensa laughed, caught herself. Sat back down again and knew she should eat.
Outside, the chickens pecked and clucked at the kitchen door and were not permitted entry.
Fox hid herself away. Mr Aldridge’s bees buried their hum in one corner, quiet and moving infrequently.
Kensa wished to hide too. What was she going to do?
She had only been learning the wise woman’s craft for a few months.
That wasn’t long enough to see a village right.
Mr Skewes’s warning – about sending her to serve at the magistrate’s house, wear a starched collar and mind her manners – rang in her ears.
If she could not heal, would that be her fate?
With her mentor gone, there was no one to help her, no one who cared enough to help her.
If she turned to Jack, he’d turn her away upon learning what she’d done, wouldn’t he?
Of course, she’d always fail. Because it was not she who should be here, in this house, in this role.
It was another.
There was a pressing ache behind her eyes.
Was it grief or the Pact? She did not feel herself.
Kensa stared into the downstairs bedroom again, hoping this time that Isolde would be alive.
No, as dead as ever, deader even, the deadest. Kensa stood there for the longest time, as though she could fix everything with a look.
Eventually, she crawled back to the parlour chair.
If she slept, well, she must have slept, for she woke again.
At a certain hour came a tentative knock at the door.
Kensa did not answer. It went away, to wherever tentative knocks go when they are not welcome.
And if she saw Jack’s broad shape pace the garden for an hour, then leave, she did not care to remember or share her grief with his.
Night gathered and did so suddenly. The room was bunched with grey when Kensa next opened her eyes.
A noise had woken her. From a low shelf fell a Bad Book.
It thumped as it hit the floor: thud. Another fell, thud, and another, thud.
Each tome collapsed as a bad weight on a bad floor in a bad hour.
Kensa approached the yew cabinet in the kitchen to find it had flung itself open.
Spines creaked and pages turned, each one holding a new and uncertain horror.
She reached for them. Flipped a cover open, scanned the contents, went to another, then swayed, trying to think and read and understand.
There had to be a guide or instructions somewhere, written for a new wise woman.
Surely, there would be an answer: a way forwards, as Isolde had told her.
Kensa searched everywhere, through every book, hurling the pantry apart, pulling jars off shelves, tipping everything off the third chair, searching Isolde’s cold pockets, raiding the chests and wardrobes.
Something, somewhere, would help her – wouldn’t it?
Until a scent trapped itself between the smoke from the grate and the heaviness of the evening and her own sweat, dried and flaked and heavy on her skin. The sea’s swell sounded near, though the wind was in the wrong direction.
Mordros, her father called it, when one can hear the ocean without seeing it.
Outside, rising above the waves, came footsteps. Kensa had heard them before. Her eyes snapped to the third chair, now empty and waiting to be filled. The Bucka’s chair. There was a knock on the door. This time, she answered it.